Tech: Nokia Lumia 930 mobile phone

I’ve been testing out a shiny new phone for a couple of weeks now, the Nokia Lumia 930. Easy to set up (I synced all 3 of my email accounts and contacts etc within 5 minutes) and even easier to use, my first impressions were good! It uses the Windows 8.1 smartphone interface, and is the fastest phone I’ve ever encountered, no lagging in opening or switching between apps and everything works at a seemingly supersonic speed.

A sleek glass front with rounded edges to the 5 inch screen, the back cover has a silky feel and the full HD resolution is impressive, all these features makes the Lumia feel more deluxe than the Samsung I was using previously. The charger is a small black disc, you literally just plonk the phone down on top of this and it magically charges, no fussy fiddling with micro usb cables (although there is a socket for one should you want to, and for when you want to transfer data without using wireless technology.)

Firstly the Lumia 930 has an impressive 20mp Pureview camera, with 1080p video recording, Carl Zeiss optics and optical image stabilization. It really is a ‘cameraphone’ in the true sense of the word! It has the ability for you to change all the settings (white balance, focus, ISO, shutter speed and exposure settings) as you would on a half decent dslr. The interface is easy to use, everything is easily adjustable via an on screen slider. I’m really impressed with some of the shots I’ve taken, even at night, which is when all my previous camera phones have failed miserably. Colours are true to life, crisp and clear. A feature I love is that all images save in a 5mp and a 19mp version, and the choice to save in RAW if you’re someone that loves to play around with images in post production. There are also a selection of other lenses available to enhance the Nokia camera further, some are free and some need to be purchased.

A couple of Saturdays ago we headed down to Madeira drive to watch the Brighton Colour Run, the perfect chance to capture some bright colours and also a chance to cheer the runners on! You can see that the Nokia camera captures the intense colours and also had no problem capturing sprinting people without blurriness!

In terms of personalisation of your home screen you can pin apps and programs, and make their icons as large or as small as you like and display them in any order. You can also pin your most frequently used web pages for easy access, a feature I love, perfect for my easily forgotten train times! I loved the ability to have a picture in the background that shows on your tiles, and that you can set the screen to light or dark (dark helps to preserve your battery life!)

Cortana is another feature, Microsoft’s version of Siri or S-voice. You need to spend a little bit of time ‘getting to know’ Cortana which consists of you telling her what you like to eat, listen to, where you work etc. You can ask her to set reminders, alarms, and people-based things, like reminding you to wish you mum a happy birthday just before you arrive at her house! If you are driving you can dictate a text message or email for her to send (as well as Skype, twitter and facebook, something that siri and S-voice don’t integrate with!) and if you ask her really nicely she’ll sing a few songs to you too, a bit of a gimmick but pretty fun nonetheless!

The other amazing feature I have become obsessed with the MixRadio, all you need to do is pick three artists and the radio creates a channel for you based on those artists, so you get to hear all kinds of music for artists that you’ll probably like but may have never heard of before! You can thumb up or down on tracks and artists you don’t like, so the radio station continues to become even more personalised to you! There are ready made mixes for when you just don’t know what to listen to, and the functionality to save 4 of these mixes for listening to offline, to save your data costs when you’re not on wifi. Bye bye Spotify, this is free and has NO ads!

Overall I’ve been really impressed with the Lumia 930, but I will share a couple of niggles in the name of a balanced review. It’s heavier than my Samsung, not hugely so but it is more noticeable when it’s in my jeans pocket. There is also no SD card slot, although realistically am I going to need more than 32gb of built in storage plus 15gb of cloud storage? probably not. The phone didn’t come with headphones, not a major problem as I have a couple of pairs, but I’m wondering if music would sound better with Nokia brand headphones?

You can get the Nokia Lumia 930 from all major network providers or from Nokia direct.

I was sent a handset in order to write this post, all thoughts and opinions are unbiased.

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